Two years ago at the San Diego Comic-Con International, Mr. Knight did what he said was his first solo panel. He's a very funny guy on the stump, fully at ease with himself and his audience.

Aaron McGruder was at Comic-Con, the traditional mistaken identity happened to him, and Knight got a great idea. He said something along the lines of, "I'll give ten bucks to the first person to walk up to Aaron McGruder and say 'Keith Knight! I really love your work!'" I never learned if anybody did it, but if it had, it would have been a camcorder moment.

Believe it or not, under all the hatred and ignorance and rallying, there are people who believe in those qualities Mr. Blumenthal describes. The problem is that no one in public office, or planning to run for it, has been effective in summoning those qualities and making people believe in it.

I'm currently reading Barack Obama's boo, The Audacity of Hope. Just browsing it at the bookstore made me buy it - when I could've saved money ordering it online. It represents some of what we're speaking about. The problem is, Obama's black. That's a problem for racists, but also for people whose racism isn't as obvious - "no sense voting for him, no matter how good he is, he'll be assassinated within hours of election."

Another problem: Hillary Clinton believes she is the anointed candidate of the Democratic Party, no matter how many people she has personally or conceptually pissed off. And she hasn't expressed hope for anything more grand than getting the keys back to the White House. (Before anyone asks, yeah, Edwards is nice too, but he's not that inspiring. And Gore is playing too cagey and cutesy, begging for the nomination without fighting for it, like a teenage girl flirting to get a date.)

As for the Republicans, instead of trying to pretend they're all the illegitimate sons of Ronald Reagan, they would be better digging up Reagan and getting his widow's voodoo astrologer to bring him back as a zombie.

The cynics posting here can't believe in anything (except, perhaps, their next snort of cocaine) and the idealists have been locked out. I sure hope somebody knows how to pick a lock by convention time...

If Mr. Kring had decided, "Hey, I'll write a series that criticizes the Bush Administration," it'd last maybe five episodes. (How long did Commander in Chief last?)

A good work of fiction builds from story, characters and their interaction. Political attitudes and viewpoints will naturally develop in such a work over time, assuming a human being is writing it and isn't restricted by a producer or studio. But politics imposed from the start feel awkward and unnatural, and audiences generally reject them.

And in all honesty, some genres tend to have political biases. Science fiction is fairly conservative. In the 1960's, the only mainstream magazine that reviewed science fiction was National Review, and many SF writers like Jerry Pournelle and John W. Campbell are/were libertarians of the "F*** Everybody But Me" school. Superhero writers like Peter David and Dennis O'Neil are old-school liberals, and most superhero stories are modestly liberal. There are exceptions, but those are the general trends of those genres.

And when was the last time you read a techno-thriller that advocated equal rights, international cooperation or not lynching gays on sight? 24 and Heroes are bound to reflect the attitudes imposed by their genres.

These kind of panels, activities, fanfic, music...they've been going on in science fiction fandom since Star Trek made the genre popular. They may have been going on with science fiction cons before that, but those were small affairs.

Mind you, not all cons. There are some events that are "autograph shows" where the celeb's talk and sign autographs for pay. These often have dealers in a "huckster room" where they sell related merchandise. It's at those conventions where fans run panels - described in the article - where intellect and ideas percolate. And the best part about these conventions - often run by fans for no other reason than their love of the genre or the individual work - is that they aren't simply exercises to strip people of their money.

This may be a revelation to the "mundanes" out there, but there are similar events, possibly running in your home town or not too far from it. "The biggest" events are not always the best. The intimate ones - such as the OASIS convention I attended last weekend in Orlando - are more like meetings with old friends than insane festivals.